Izmir Sephardi cooking holds a strong place in the food culture of western Anatolia. It carries the Iberian inheritance of the Sephardi families who settled in the city, reshaped over centuries by local ingredients and by life in a busy port.
- Tradition: İzmir Sephardi cuisine
- Key book: 100 recipes, first published 2004
- Signature dishes: boyos, burekas, fritada, mustachudos
A kitchen kept in the old quarter
Food and communal life sat close together in the first Juderia. Havra Street, named for its synagogues, grew into a market for kosher food, where the community bought much of its meat, fish, chicken, yoghurt, cheese and eggs, and where kosher wine was produced. The courtyard houses of Ikicesmelik, the kortijos, became tied to local favourites such as boyos and subiye, a drink made from melon seeds.
The hundred recipes
In 2004 six women of the community, Ester Antebi, Sara Enriquez, Lina Eskenazi, Nüket Franco, Ora Gürkan and Jinet Sidi Sarfati, gathered a hundred recipes into a book of Izmir Sephardic cuisine, drawn from their own kitchens and from what they had learned from earlier generations. The dishes range from boyos and burekas to fritada and empanadas, and sweets such as mustachudos, mogados and pandespanya.
The book was written to keep a living tradition from fading and to share it beyond the community. It remains a useful starting point for anyone interested in the Sephardi table of Izmir.